Sleeping Dogs has endured a difficult development process. Originally titled True Crime: Hong Kong, the open-world title was cancelled by Activision in early 2011. However, things are looking promising after the publishing rights were acquired by Square Enix, who gave developer United Front Games ample time to polish and finish off the game.

Digital Spy recently spoke to United Front Games producer Dan Sochan to learn more about Square's involvement as well as the Hong Kong setting and the unique hand-to-hand combat.

You have clearly spent a lot of effort trying to make Hong Kong feel authentic and believable. Can you run through what research you undertook to achieve that level of authenticity?
"We definitely strived to be as authentic as possible with the Hong Kong experience, so numerous members of our team went down over the last several years, taking several trips - some purely based on just taking photographs. We took tens of thousands of photographs of buildings and architecture in the city.

"We watched lots of films and Hong Kong cinema for inspiration as well. The majority of the voice recording was done in Hong Kong, especially the ambient people in the world, and most of the ambient people spoke Cantonese solely with no English. So, all of those elements have helped make it feel as realistic as possible."

Can you name some of the films you saw to get a good idea of what Hong Kong is like?
"In terms of inspiration for the game, Infernal Affairs was a big one. In terms of how we did a lot of the combat and the slow-mo movements and sequences, we took inspiration from John Woo films like Hard Boiled and looked at Jackie Chan and Jet Li to try and really capture the essence of Hong Kong cinema, while bringing it to a wider audience in Western countries."

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How long did it take for you to develop the hand-to-hand combat to the point where you were happy with it?
"We're still tuning the combat today. It's such a deep system, and it's reliant on so many animations. They build it to break out of any particular animation and quickly transition into a new animation whether it be a counter or a grab.

"It took a lot of time. We built the whole system from scratch ourselves. So, it's been the focus - kind of our unique selling point - since the beginning of the inception of the game, and we're still tweaking it now. But we're very, very close to where we want to be."

Environmental takedowns are a big part of that - what is your favourite one in the game?
"Probably my favourite environmental takedown would be using the car door, smashing the guy's head repeatedly with it and then kicking it to finish him off. On the funnier side, I like the air duct takedown, where you throw the enemy into the air duct and you can hear the murmuring and mumbling through it, with the legs kicking away."

Sleeping Dogs also lets the player do stuff like free running, hijacking cars while driving and vault shooting. What was the thinking behind that?
"With a lot of things like the vault shooting, it came from a desire to keep the player progressing forward, not just sitting back and waiting for enemies to come to him or sitting undercover and basically have your health regenerate. On its own, your health will only ever regenerate to 50% of the maximum, so it's up to the player to do cool moves to fill up the combat meter, which will in turn regenerate the health."

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Each vehicle noticeably handles differently from each other, like you'd expect. Aside from getting around the map, how key is the driving in the game?
"The driving is a really big component for the game. We have a few different core story missions and cop cases that involve you driving and doing races. We also have over 25 different illegal street races in the world that you can do.

"We tried to do each mission so they're not just repetitive. So, you tend to do some running, some fighting, some driving and potentially some shooting. There's even shooting in vehicles."

There appears to be a large focus on the narrative - can you go into the story a little and explain what makes it so strong?
"On the story side, we tried to stay very gritty and be a true crime drama. We do have some lighter moments in the game and some humour, but overall the subject matter's pretty serious with an undercover police officer putting their life at risk at all times.

"We really wanted to tell a story of what it's like to be an undercover cop - each day always having to be in character, always being on guard, making sure you don't blow your cover. And there's also the risk you put on not just your own life but your friends and family as well. We thought it was important. In open-world games, storylines often feel a little light, so we wanted to focus our efforts there to create a narrative that was very interesting and keep the player's attention throughout the game."

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At the end of missions, you're awarded a number of police and triad points depending on how you play the level. Does leaning in one direction have any effect on how the story plays out?
"No, we made a conscious decision very early on that we wanted to focus our time and resources into telling this cop story and really putting the player in his shoes. As soon as you try and start splitting endings, obviously there's only a finite amount of time, money and resources you can put towards a project. We didn't want to dilute the story, so we tried to focus on that.

"In terms of the emergent gameplay, when the player gets their score on the triad and cop side, that will affect how they're able to upgrade their character. In the open world itself, a lot of the favours you do will impact who you're able to meet and the contacts you make. Some of the other additional secondary content can also be unlocked through that system."

Aside from the favours and the street races, what side activities are available for the player?
"There are cop cases, in which the player is investigating particular crimes that are happening around the city and gathering evidence. We've got a bunch of different mini-games: hacking, phone tracing, bug planting and lock-picking. All these different things help him basically build a case file against some of these criminals and in the end getting some of them arrested while staying undercover.

"We have a lot of emergent events that occur as well. You'll see drug deals go down and you can choose to fight those thugs who are dealing and clear them out of that area of the world. We also have jobs that you can do, like going collecting money from loan sharks or picking up stolen cars from around the city and bringing them back for a cash reward."

Onto Square Enix acquiring the publishing rights, how much of Sleeping Dogs was completed when it was cancelled by Activision?
"We had a fair amount of the gameplay done at that point. We weren't quite alpha but partnering with Square has been fantastic. They really know the process of making open-world games. They've worked on Just Cause and they understand what it takes to make a fluid and intuitive combat system as shown by their work with Rocksteady on Batman: Arkham Asylum.

"It has been a great partnership for us, and they've really allowed us to have the time we needed to take the game from great to fantastic."

Was your initial vision for the game affected because of the switch from Activision to Square?
"For the first two years of the development cycle, we were actually creating a new IP. It wasn't until later that the brand of True Crime was added. But overall, going from that to Sleeping Dogs, the content itself has not changed. The music, the characters, the story - none of that's changed. It's just given us additional time to really polish the areas that we needed to. We added a couple of cool features, too, like the upgrade system and the online leaderboards."

Aside from the name change, were there any other mandatory changes that had to be made?
"No, nothing changed. We were fortunate to just be able to continue on with minimal disruption to the team and the game development cycle."

How tough was having to come up with a new name for the game?
"I think it's always challenging to come up with a name for a game, especially if it's potentially going to become a franchise. You don't want to pigeonhole yourself with a name that only suits the first game. We went with Sleeping Dogs to distinguish ourselves from some of the other games out there. The name has a cinematic sound to it, which ties in with the storytelling that we're doing and all of the detailed cutscenes."

Lastly, what makes Sleeping Dogs stand out among other open-world games?
"Any time we talk about the game, we've always talked about redefining and focusing our time and efforts on polishing the moment-to-moment gameplay. The things that you do the most in the open world should always be fun and enjoyable. Players will enjoy the mixture of hand-to-hand martial arts combat, driving, shooting and free-running."

Sleeping Dogs will launch on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on August 14 in North America and August 17 in Europe.